CALGARY, AB, Dec. 24, 2012/ Troy Media/ – From the first reports of the shooting deaths of 26 children and adults at a Connecticut school on Dec. 14, the dominant theme of the subsequent news coverage has been the availability of guns. But it’s long past time for the news media to widen its attention to include other reasons why a human being one rc flight simulator day decides to arm himself to the teeth, walk into a school and take lives.

During the first week following the shooting in Newtown, we witnessed politicians pledging change to gun ownership laws in the U.S., even pondering a renewed ban on certain automatic weapons (a previous ban expired in 2004), more extensive background checks on potential gun owners, and initiating background check requirements for roving gun shows. (Remarkably, vendors at gun shows can sell guns to anyone without knowing whether the buyer has a criminal record.)

A teary-eyed President Barack Obama has mused publicly that such violence has to end, and he’s been joined by some formerly hard-line Republicans, who to this point had been lined up behind the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its efforts to protect Americans’ second amendment right to bear arms.

Some people blame video games and violent movies for driving perpetrators over the edge. Teachers in a remote Texas town have been armed because the nearest police station is about 20 minutes away, and the school district can’t afford other forms of security. The State of Michigan has made it legal to carry concealed weapons in a school. The NRA has suggested placing armed guards in schools because the best protection, it argues, is to have a “good person” with gun on standby to take out a “bad person” with a gun.

Mass casualty shootings are sadly commonplace events; we know there will be more. The surprise can be in the scale (Norway, 2011), or the target (young children in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, or women such as in Montreal 1989), or the place (a movie theatre in Colorado, 2012).  After each incident, the public is inundated with tears, promises of change, general drama and saddening detail. The only thing missing is consideration of other potential solutions.

In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was as upset as the rest of us about the deaths of the children in Newtown, but said Canada’s more rigid gun control policies are tough enough (even though the large-magazine rifle used in Connecticut is also legally available for sale in Canada).

While it would be naïve to suggest that news coverage alone could alter conditions that precipitate such events, more sophisticated reporting might at least promote public policy discussion. There is more to this phenomenon than guns, and there is no single answer to the problem. Promotion of expanded control over firearms makes sense, but journalists should expand the narrative around these events. They won’t have far to go to find additional ideas.

Those who commit such crimes are remarkably similar Australian academic Paul E. Mullen argues in a 2004 article:

“Not only do these massacres follow an almost stereotypical course, but the perpetrators tend to share common social and psychological disabilities. They are isolates, often bullied in childhood, who have rarely established themselves in effective work roles as adults. They have personalities marked by suspiciousness, obsessional traits, and grandiosity. They often harbor persecutory beliefs, which may occasionally verge on the delusional. The autogenic (self-generated) massacre is essentially murder suicide, in which the perpetrators intend first to kill as many people as they can and then kill themselves. The script for this particular form of suicide has established itself in western society and is continuing to spread, and to diversify.”

We know the majority of perpetrators are young males, which could be evidence that there are systemic socialization issues at play. It is at least worth a look to see if that is the case.

We already know that physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children can be factors in how people act as adults.  A study published in December in the journal Child: Care, Health and Development suggests the potential for the physical abuse of children rises dramatically in families where divorce, unemployment and addictions are combined.

The Ontario-based Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has for many years promoted the need to educate parents and prospective parents on the needs of young children, believing that arrested emotional development in children results in adults who have trouble coping with life; potentially becoming parents who may in turn treat their children as they were treated, thereby perpetuating the problem.

Understanding why someone takes a gun into a school or other public places involves a terribly complex series of social and emotional equations, which may be why the news media latches onto single-focus resolutions, and awkwardly reprises the gun control issue each time it happens again. It is a tendency that should be arrested, and news organizations should make more effort to push past the tears and fears and expand the narrative of a shooting to include an examination of how we raise our children.

Troy Media columnist Terry Field is an associate professor and chair of the journalism major in the Bachelor of Communication program at Mount Royal University, in Calgary, Alberta. http://hiram1217.kazeo.com/